30 January 2008

Sixty - Forty - Twenty ...

January 30... sixty years ago:

In 1948, people in India were saddened (understatement) to find their 'Father of the Nation', Mahatma Gandhi, had been assassinated by a Hindu 'extremist' (a word we know so well today...), named Narayan Vinayak Godse...



Mahatma was shot three times... this photo comes from Geneva, Switzerland, a mural that adorns the wall of the largest Salle of the 'House of Associations', where Oxfam and many other NGOs have their Geneva offices.

Would Gandhi have any more influence on events of our turbulent deadly decade, then the noted non-violent Statesmen of our era?

At ZENmud productions, we don't believe he could have changed our current history... '


January 30... forty years ago:


United States armed forces were caught unprepared for the Tet offensive
in Vietnam, an action that turned the war, in a year that turned the world, away from peace, and, with the election of Richard Nixon, brought on the beginning of the era in which we find ourselves aghast, sometimes, at the unceasing violence that brings pain to the mothers, and wealth to the arms merchants globally...

As a Human being, opposing war in all contexts, seeking peace in all cultures, one wonders how the world we love, has been taken over, in the States and elsewhere, by arms merchants and the politicians who amass your wages and spend them on DeathTOYS...


These men couldn't join Gandhi, in following his words of peace, because they were all gunned down by 'people who hate(d) Democrats'...







Martin Luther King










Robert F Kennedy







And twenty years ago?

Not much: Reagan was handing off the ball, Gipper to Bush the Greater, having shrugged off Kerry's investigations and the Iran contra scandal... and this, from the New York Times archives:

Edwin Meese was told of payments to be made to the Israeli Labor Party for help in arranging a billion-dollar Iraqi oil pipeline, present and former Government officials said.


___ç-ç*******/ ZENmud \*******ç-ç___
© 2008


29 January 2008

Your choice: statistics or spin...

Mah fellah Amurricans...
(smile)

WE, the people (who can vote), have one choice to make: follow your mind, or follow the crowd, the spin, the media.






Given 'rational Reality' as a life choice, I'd urge you to study this chart, which highlights the economic differences between the last Presidency of the 20th Century with the current misAdministration, and then send it to your friends across the country.

I found it at Bartcop; he found it at Think Progress...


(click on the chart for a larger Bartcop version)


"Make up YOUR mind" is sometimes a beautiful statement to offer...

Dates and deadlines for your participation...


___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___
© 2008




24 January 2008

WORLD ECONOMIC headache...



Living at lakeside, in picturesque, Puck-ish 'Château Ghetto'...


ZENmud couldn't discern of eyes became irritated this morning from the large-scale inversion trapping fumes from thousands of spewing cars, power plants and more, around the Geneva countryside, or...

... if eyes were burning due to the presence of Pervey Mushroomazz across the ranges, over there at the World Economic Forum, which began yesterday, in the absolutely posh resort of Davos, CH.


"I can feel it, spewing in the air tonight..."


Who's in Davos this week?





Pervey Mushrazraz



aka 'THE LIFE of the party'... this photo looks like he just found out good news about rivals to power, non?












apparently Condaleeza Rice is
also somewhere nearby...




although we at ZENmud productions
are a bit sceptical....




because there are no rabbits,
and Rabbits go so good with
Rice...



HEADLINES of tomorrow:

"Decadent George goes all out for
final Easter Bunny parade, in
crazy custom contest costume"










Will Rice be helping the world work on the 'road map' for peace, or does she need to remember the ZENmud roadmap for Bush the Lesser?


If you've impatiently been waiting for more macrovision from crystelZENmud, apologies are all we can offer, as our other blog

WADAwatch has been occupying a great deal of time recently, hopefully the balance can be maintained as we rev up to the US Super Tuesday in two weeks or less...


___ç-ç*******/ ZENmud \*******ç-ç___
© 2008



16 January 2008

What is that in YOUR Bush?


Do you believe that Bush the Lesser lowered taxes?

You sincerely believe that he had to 'fight them terr'ists over there, so we wouldn't have to fight them over here'?


And you believe that we've turned our backs on the Bush league's plan for reforming Social Security?


How about Bush, evidently waking up for the fifth time, as to the conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians? Looks like they're nearly married now, after seven years of the Bush misAdministration's treatment?


A believer in Enron's loyalty and beneficence to its employees?


Our finest hour as Americans, came in forming the Coalition of the Willing, including our staunchest allies, from the island nation of Vanatu?


At ZENmud productions, we question your premises.


Bush the Lesser didn't lower taxes: he inadequately financed the introduction of his rampant growth of the Government's budget, mostly aligned with the War President's burdens. The tax rates he lowered, only means that taxes tomorrow must be boosted, if anyone sane is elected President.. Taxes are perpetual; balancing the necessary spending to the collected revenues is not the rocket science Bush apparently believes it to be.


Federal taxes, being a function for financing fiscal expenditures in response to the implementation of budgeted programs, is a perfectly reasonable series of mathematical balance sheet entries. Bush is the only president in American history to lower taxes at the same time that he initiated two wars.


It's really simple.

If we agree that we need X trillion dollars to fund the machine of State, we need an intake of funds in rough parity (X +/– five per cent?) to that figure.


The Republican Congress, in full support of the
misAdministration's war–lust (at the Cabinet level), implemented with gusto each mistaken, misguided policy devised by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle and their benumbed minions.


We didn't need to 'reward', with lowered taxes, the RepublicanT's 'base' that elected Bush the Lesser, at the same time we're printing billions of dollars, borrowing more from China and other friendly allies or strategic partners, all of which are being chucked 'out the window' into bank vaults abroad.


How? Through such corrupt 'vehicles' as Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, the Carlyle Group, etc.


World War II may only have succeeded because American citizens loaned their own savings (remember, or heard of “WAR BONDS”?) to their government for the purchase of planes, bullets and much more. Billions and billions of dollars.


But there is no WAR BOND program today... our grandchildren will have that joy, of knowing that their grandparents were so in fear of a man in a cave across the planet from us, built expressly for his use by the CIA (some 25 years ago)... tis the grandchildren of the future, whose burdensome repayments of the War President Bush misAdministration will recall the phrase 'broke the camel's back'.


There were no Al Qaida in Iraq, prior to US removal of the only man in Iraq capable of keeping them out: Saddam Hussein.


Bin Laden must have praised Allah for this miracle: the United States actually cleared the path for his forces' invasion of Baghdad itself, and most of Iraq's eighteen provinces.


There probably is a sign in Arabic or Farsi that says 'George W Bush International Terrorist Institute – Baghdad campus ahead 1km'.


Like this?


Apparently America has adopted, not the rule of law or civilized resolution of conflicts, but merely the rules of a bully.


There has to be an erroneous basis in one's personality formation, to enjoy inflicting pain on others, on seeking to increase self–worth, or self–satisfaction, through the use of demeaning interactions, both as State–to–State or as individuals.


Bullies achieve this, experience it and relish the concept of further provocations.


Bullies rarely grow out of that mindset.



Social Security: you wanted it 'fixed'?

You agreed with Bush that this program is bound to (and will) collapse without a radical deregulation of retirement financing, from Federal control to the private sector?


Please! Do your homework.


There's only one problem in the financing of Social Security. It recurs every ten to 25 years or so, apparently. The last time it was fixed, was in 1983. Under Rocket Ron Reagan.


With Alan Greenspan as the head of the Commission, they proposed the one simple adjustment necessary to realign SS income and expenditures. They, Republicans, recommended RAISING the maximum salary level for SS contributions up to $87,600.00 annually.


If the same action were undertaken today, boosting the ceiling from 87K to... say $116,000 annually, the resulting increase in funds would be sufficient to replenish and counteract the boost in benefits payments that corresponds with the Boomers' retirements.


In their haste to waste the Social Security system, the Bush misAdministration forgets to remind people that retiring 'Boomers', admittedly more numerous as a retiring generation than ever before, were also the generation that invented 'DINK' couples: 'double–income–no–kids'. Very relevant, as Bush and his lackeys don't talk about the reductions in benefits paid to children, which are decreasing nearly as fast as the increase in benefit payments to retirees.


Never forget, as well, that the SocSec Administration (SSA) is actually one of the leanest government programs on this planet: Paul Krugman has pointed out that SSA pays out about 99 per cent of their budget as benefits; only one per cent of the SSA budget is retained to pay for staff and administrative costs!


If we hadn't gone to war with Afghanistan and Iraq in these last seven years, in what status would be the Second Intifada today? If Israel and the Palestinian Territories are no closer today than they were in Carter or Clinton's days, how 'interesting' to see Bush agitate and voyage for a 'solution' as his misAdministration jockeys in vain to allow this pissant tripe of a President to 'acquire a legacy'.


Sincerely, the situation in the Middle East
is much worse than you care, Mr Bush.


Water supply and use, for Palestinians (mostly sourced out of aquifers and systems under increasingly rapacious Israeli control), has dropped annually, as well and maybe in proportion to the spread of illegal Israeli settlements and the Israelis' Apartheid wall.


Make sure that the photographers capture your sincerity, Herr Bush; it will play well on FOXnews.


Enron, oh! For the good old days...


When a Bush Pioneer tanks his corporation, and seeks aid from George the Lesser (while selling off stock for profit) how did Ken Lay take the news, finding out that dear George 'hardly knew the man'...


Ken was the same man who had been national co–chairman for his father's reelection campaign in 1992, and still Bush wouldn't bail him out.

(Never mind Enron's role in the California energy market deregulation fiasco, while counseling Cheney so well as to the Administration's pro–fossil fuel National Energy Policy)


Every day that goes by in our occupation of Iraq, is a day that sucks money out of your grandchildrens' funding for their university costs in 2020.


Thanks to Bushism, increases in terrorist training opportunities abound in Iraq, where concentration by this deviate misAdministration corrupts policy opportunities for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and increases the off–shore banking accounts from all the corrupt government officials and their government–contractor friends, who've funnelled your tax dollars into their pockets.


Denigrating good and loyal allies in a most insulting fashion, destructive domestic and foreign policy choices, dramatically reduced the world's perceptions of the precepts of American society.


No matter who replaces George W Bush in one year and one week, their task won't be easy.


If the dollar tanks, now historically lower and not likely to reverse course in the next ten years, Americans may find themselves back to work, soon, in companies seeking lower global costs, in the country that formulated 'globalism' as a means of accomplishing the same thing.


And if in this next year, 'the Faithful' awaken to the hangover produced by seven years of lynch–mob activities, as the bullies supporting the global Bully–in–Chief, what attitude should one offer them?


What is that in YOUR Bush?



___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___
© 2008




14 January 2008

Human nature and the FREE RIDE...


He was driving a friend's car today, on one of those absolutely picturesque European roads, rural, between vines and farms, across the knoll which shows lac Léman on the north, with the Jura mountains looking similar to the Front Range of the Rockies in Colorado... and to the south Mont Blanc.

He was driving his friend's car home to her, after she graciously let him carry all his paraphernalia home, from a combined-effort dinner party (his cooking, her apartment, their appetizers, etc).

After a beautiful ski-day (his), in deep powder (nearly knee-ish) and deeper blue skies, he begged off returning the car that evening, thinking mutually that it would be much easier to find a parking in her densely-populated quartier of Genève, during the mid
-morning lull in traffic on any Monday.

At the holistic hour of 11 AM, he set forth on his quest, to safely return homeward her sexy little German auto.

The road home had one small village to go through.

At the end of that village, the more open rural part has some 'curbs' installed simply to force oncoming cars to slow and yield right-of-way to oncoming traffic, to save children, etc.

He presumed to have had the right of way, but he saw the small electrical service truck coming at him. He pulled as far to the right side as was safe, reduced his speed, and still she came at him...

She, obviously oblivious, was not reducing speed, nor was she moving away (at ZEN Central, we ponder the lack of 'WARNING' options similar to those used in the skies, to prevent mid-air collisions...)

So inevitably, her driver's side mirror hit the friend's driver's side mirror, and both actual mirrors shattered out to the pavement.

Having stopped, our Hero refrained from uncouth screaming, having noted her truck's similar damages, and having memories of those days when doing similar acts with 'the boss' car' were grounds for losing a job...

So our Hero admonished her severely, in French, for her lack of comprehension that she was obligated to have slowed down, obligated to have waited, obligated to have moved away...

And knowing that the car's insurance 'deductable' was probably not going to reimburse a penny, our Hero let the 'perp' walk (drive) away, without exchanging information...

So get this!

It must be interjected here, that 'OUR HERO' is a totally-ZEN-ish kind of Guy, VERY similar in outlook to venerable ZENmud himself... (smiles)

As he was continuing to her apartment, full of remorse for new expenses, grateful that damage was limited to less than 250 CHf (now roughly some $220), and being a realist, he patiently guided her lovely-but-sullied car towards finding a parking spot near her downtown apartment: unless the gods were good, this often equals a ten-minute to one hour exercise... and as a good ZENish person always will...

He was gliding up to the stoplight ahead, at which his lane was clear, and two cars blocked the route on the right hand of a four-lane road (two lanes into, two lanes departing from GVA).

Trying his best to retain ZENishness, thinking 'save vital petroleum' and 'maybe glide long enough for the green light to return'...

Can you see in your mind's eye, the next part?

A black Audi station wagon, driven by a blonde woman, screamed up the right lane like BODE MILLER on the Lauberhorn, and swerved in front, nearly hitting our friend's friend's car, as well as the other car at a stop.
(PHOTO credit Marco Trovati AP)

AND when our Hero returned to ZEN Central, and related this story, it made the following point about:

Human nature and the FREE RIDE...

The reader is kindly asked to refer back to the 'PARADOX of HUMANITY', posted at the eve of Christmas: December 2007.

What is it about individuals in our society, who silently demand or demonstrate their utter lack of motivation to cooperate with other people? What about trying to understand the motivations of society in a whole, and seeking to attain that 'rising tide' attitude that 'lifts all boats'?

Our Hero saw the accident about to happen, 'SHE', the perp, didn't.

Our Hero saw a means to glide efficiently towards a light about to change, the feminine wildebeast in the other Audi saw 'an opportunity from which to profit'.

Fine:

Short term profits, be it seconds gained at someone's expense, or vital planetary resources that would benefit another ten or more generations before total exhaustion occurs or resource replacement is achieved.

This is the pure essence of the 'Free rider problem' in economics; in more advanced parlance this is sometimes referred to as the Pareto Efficiency.

Men or women who cannot learn to share the road (was our Hero guilty as well? We may not have access to his thought processes at those two moments, but we will take him at his word, for the salient points given)

... can be categorized as SELFISH, or IGNORANT, EGOTISTS or IDIOTS.

But change, in a system doomed to deeper annual dependence on oil, is a characteristic that opposes beliefs in short
-term gain, for long-term benefit to the greater or greatest number of people.

It seems unfathomable to some, that there are actually those of US who would sacrifice our slice of short
-term 'heaven' for long-term benefits we wouldn't possibly share... but!

If you believe we live on a planet we've borrowed from YOUR children, THEN you need to ask yourself how your going to face your grandkids, or great
-grandchildren, and tell them:


"I was a part of the GENERATION that failed you..."

While adamant ZENers will be asking forgiveness for the inability to persuade a planetful of people to act in rational rationality: by rationing the remaining reserves of 'free energy', which at $90/barrel, still remains a valid way to describe petroleum products.


Ask yourself: are you a free RIDER, or are you concerned about more than yourself?

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___
© 2008


PS: Bode Miller tied this weekend, the US record for Alpine Skiing World Cup victories, with his 27th victory coming at Wengen, Switzerland, on the famed and mythic Lauberhorn course.

04 January 2008

OBAMA hey Bama ...


There's a certain taste of clean victory today coming out of Iowa... but a central tenet of crystelZENmud, is to avoid the daily conjecture, and surf the wave of trends, focussing always on the goal, of rendering this planet worthy to give to following generations.

ZENmud productions was lucky enough to find a great song, that was put out through the Des Moines Register: enjoy this three minutes, even if you're from the 'other party'.

Written by Jason Walsmith, guitarist from the Nadas, a group native to Iowa, his choice of lyrics presents a frank concept of the media political show that IS a presidential campaign, as it invaded and occupied Iowa, and is now en tour to New Hampshire, and then to Super Tuesday.

ZENmud is publishing a self-produced transcript of the lyrics, at a time when it is likely that Jason is asleep: we don't know if he's satisfied with the results of the caucuses ('cauci'?), or not.

Anyway, rejoice that, of all the changes in the USA (Including the Lakota Nation), that humour is still alive!



Get outta our town (Campaign Lament)


Jason Walsmith

You say that it's cold here... but the people are warm,
You asked us to caucus, and drive through a storm.

You asked us to rally, and hold up a sign
You asked us to bring our friends, and volunteer time.


(refrain)
Get out of our town!
Get out of my face!

You barged into our home,
With your political race.

Get out of our town!
Get out of my head!

You asked me to vote,
I bring my money instead.


All the restaurants are full, you can't find a seat.
You gotta be a Senator, to grab a bite to eat.


All the rooms are booked: blame CABLE TV,
Chris Dodd bought a house here, to have a place to sleep.


Obama brought Oprah, and Hillary has Bill,
Everybody has famous friends, on Capital Hill.


Huckabee has Chuck Norris, who votes with his fists,
Kevin Bacon loves Edwards, by one degree (not six).



Get out of our town!
Get off of my phone!

Don't wanna be pushed,
Don't wanna be pulled.

Get out of our town!
That'd be just fine...

Please remember to recycle,
Those wasted yard signs.

John Edwards never left here; Fred Thompson was late.
Was that really a snowman, on the YouTUBE debate?


But we really are nice here, and we really do care,
We'll save you a porkchop, at the Iowa State Fair!


Get out of our town!
Get out of our state!

(But universal health care,
Would really be great!)


Get out of our town!
Take a giant step back.

And go somewhere else,
To argue Iraq!!!

Get out of our town!
Get out of my face!

You barged into my home, with your political race......

Jason Walsmith of The Nadas (Video click here)


Of note, in a world that is packaged, is instant access to sincere opinions, creatively offered.


Of historical note, the first place that ZENmud himself was ever lost from his family, was at the Minnesota State Fair.


Thanks Jason!


___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___
© 2008


03 January 2008

From GW Bush to the FIFTH dimension...

The present decade presents certain intertwined stories of George Bush, Blackwater, Halliburton and KBR in Iraq, of al Qaida in Iraq, of neoconistic empire–building, of capitalism's race to deplete the resources of sustainability:

is a discombobulated, five-dimensional puzzle that many Americans are ignoring, while the Planet gazes on in dismay

Like deer in a car's headlights, wallowing blindly, the great majority of US voters are retaining historic allegiance to moribund political philosophies that exist, today, only in name.

The 'dimensions' of this explosive puzzle are:


Temporal

Economic

Geopolitical

Political

Philosophical


The truth about George W Bush, his neoconservative supporters, and the damage wrought by his misAdministration, is more ludicrous than that word could convey.

Yet anyone's imagination, directing itself into the totality of the concept, is too outrageously discordant; most intelligent rationalists ponder the fragments alone, which they may easily grasp, while thinking that equals the whole of the 'real world' (as we know it).


Irrational as it sounds, it's important to know when and how this dilemma will be resolved, and upon completion of the Bush debacle, the incongruous facets of its reality should unite, jointed or meshing as tightly as Inca pyramidal walls.


Temporal Dimension


In eight years under Bill Clinton, it wasn't the downsizing of the US Armed Forces that torqued out America's future.


It was a much simpler fact: after some twelve years of US involvement in both Vietnam and the benign Space Race, then the eleven–year Reagan-Bush (the Greater) defense build-up through the Iran–Contra scandal, the 'war on drugs' in South America, and the Persian Gulf War, the conservative, then neoconservative dream – of perpetually growing America's Permanent Military Industry – was shut down: for the first time in some 25 years or more.


A paradox emerging from this 'peace dividend', which today continues to serve as evidence; how the Republicants used Clinton's concerted efforts to 'streamline' the military
as an insult of his capacities, when these were in fact based on recommendations inherited in part from the Defense Secretary of Bush the Greater: Dick Cheney.


Peaceful expansion of the US knowledge economy created a critical–mass economic growth explosion from Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Cisco and so many other companies, all creating their proportional empires which re-channelled wealth and investment flows away from Aeronautics, Defense industries and other dinosaurs of the pre–knowledge economy.


Similarly to how the hippie counter-culture had once almost 'derailed' the US war markets, the 1990s introduced the Geek Revolution, which rapidly overshadowed the US war machine.


At nearly the same time, coincidental geopolitical events were taking place in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Iraq; events that were causing certain men, the likes of whom James Baker III would be sharing lunch hour meetings, to discuss the major impact on US business and its economy.


Thus, temporally and temporarily the Nineties were a decade without massive growth in US military expansion or influence. That is NOT a bad concept.



Economic Dimension


Permanent Military Keynesianism (PmK) is the term by which certain economists have categorized a new form of government spending, which flips upside–down the very core of governmental conceptualization, usually the most disdained by 'conservatives'.


Conservatives are historically said to be (and boast incessantly) for less government, which is linked with greater business freedom (remember that Fascism in government theory, relates a strong interrelationship between business and government).


Conservatives cringed when, during the Great Depression, President Roosevelt invented the multiple Agencies that rebuilt the American work force by work projects to improve National Parks and many other grand infrastructural oeuvres. That peacetime mobilization helped build the working momentum for a new war effort.


Keynesian theory was named for noted economist John Maynard Keynes, who called upon governments to boost just these types of grand scale projects in times of recession or depression, beyond budgeted expenditure levels, as a boost to jump–start a sickly performing economy.


Conservatives, or Republicans if and when they return to normal party principles, detest the Keynesian theory expressly because its implementations are countercyclical: government may be 'spending' money it hadn't yet received as tax revenue.


Thus the flip side, from Keynesianism to Permanent Military Keynesianism, involves an unstated need by the Puppet Mastered, formerly conservative Republicans, to sustain the growth of a War Economy as a cancerous destruction of a healthy balanced economy... mindful that this was clearly predicted by America's greatest modern era military commander, Dwight D Eisenhower:


"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."



Notwithstanding these immortal, true phrases, there is no part of the Bush clan, or their friends, that is opposed to skyrocketing gasoline prices (profits!)... a win–win opportunity for those in the highest American echelons, as their oil stocks rise in value, as exploration companies dust off equipment that is now viable, since oil reserves that were previously unthinkable, due to high expense for the return on investment, are now amply–priced for a fat profit margin.


Billions stolen in Iraq, fraudulent contractors operating in Iraq, all taking outrageous profits from fellow US Taxpayers, as more billions are siphoned into the coffers of Big Oil Companies, through excessive profits as a result of dwindling reserves and acutely–focused attacks or distortions of relevant economies such as we see this week in Kenya...

Kenya? Bush?? Don't get it?


Scientists talk about '
entropy theory' in terms of thermodynamics; in a simplistic example, any closed system has working energy and 'wasted energy': as the wasted energy increases, the stability of the system is degraded.


Excessive military spending, had Eisenhower been a scientist and not a general, could have been stated as a simple entropic waste of governmental resources, that could be building homes, schools and hospitals, instead of an insatiable supply of deathToys.


Geopolitical Dimension


Bush and Rove taught EVERY political Chief of any country how to blatantly steal elections, forcing the citizens of the world to ponder the essential meaning of 'Democracy'.


The Bush misAdministration has encouraged and educated (passively, at the least) various Heads of State, from Putin to Hu Jintao in China, how to deal with 'domestic political opponents', through misuse and abuse of the all–encompassing label of 'terrorist'.


Moreover, pushing the neoconservative political agenda towards its most extreme points, Bush and his cronies, puppet–masters or disciples are achieving the opposite of their rhetoric, as they prop up the fading Musharraf dictatorship in Pakistan, while proclaiming support for democracy in all the Islamic countries.



The times we are witnessing, show that the roles of governments around the world have a sense of 'take what we can grab, however we can take it!'.


Political Dimension


While back at home, Bush presents AND represents the worst aspects of PmK, siphoning off hope for a better world (except in his rhetoric), through the massive deficit 'War President' campaigns of Fear and Terror, that he waged under the maniacal tutelage of Karl Rove. Campaigns abroad fed into political campaigns at home: the 2002 and 2006 Congressional campaigns were waged against a fear–driven public, as well as in 2004, during the reelection campaign of Bush the Lesser.


With the MIC (military–industrial–complex) rooted like dandelions across every Congressional district in our country, a long process that now seems irreversible, the MIC has mutated, since the loss of Bush the Grand in 1992. Here at ZEN Central, the transformation into the

Petroleum–Military–Communications–Industrial–Complex, or PMCIC,


... has created a seamless web of petroleum–related industries (including of course the prime addicts: automobiles), communications and media, and industry (in general, and of course defense or aerospace), a complex fascist influence on US government policy.


No politician in America can combat the 'PMCIC'... they are 'selected' through a monetization process, selected for 'name appeal' and possessing a ZERO Fuck UPs history (or better: ZERO unexplainable Fuck Ups).

There's a corollary to this statement: any politician who comes out in favor of reducing the military, reducing US dependence on petroleum imports, reducing Health Care costs, reforming the US media through the FCC, is NEVER going to win office, under our present corrupted system.


Philosophical Dimension


More than two hundred years ago, Western civilizations, under monarchic economies, worldwide conquest campaigns, and the hubris of hegemony over foreign peoples, cultures and traditions, produced 'the Enlightenment' in both a spiritual and secular sense.


Manifest Destiny became the rallying cry for US policy, as it conquered, then negotiated treaties with Native American tribes, all of which treaties were promptly and continuously broken.


Somehow, that feeling of superiority transcended itself, in the second half of the Twentieth Century, as America 'saved Europe' twice, leapfrogging over the older European States in economic prowess, bolstered by the rising exportation of cultural manifestations: films, music and TV, as well as consumer goods that flaired in the nostrils of younger generations.


America succeeded in Coca Cola'ing the world, in McDonalds'izing the planet, a commercial victory over communism that politics could never countervail.


But as the world sought to keep up, to take the economic role of cheap labour provider, as economic advancement farmed off 'old tech' jobs (making lightbulbs, tires, running shoes, etc) to distant shores.


Those peoples all yearned, as well, for compensatory purchasing power to sustain these markets, the Homeland attitude in America was growing stronger, in the neoconservative model of life in the Twenty–first Century.

The philosophy of fear, combined with the enjoyment of consumer goods consumption, equates in near totality with the concepts presented in the work of a dystopian future:





1984




Conclusion


Through the advent of the Military Industrial Complex, its evolution into the PMCIC, and the moral degeneration of politics in the United States, it is clear that a trend has been established, of reducing citizens into two (not mutually exclusive) classes:


the Sellers

the Buyers


One can simply decipher one's location on any two–axis graph, how high up the 'food chain' one's life is.


This presumes one has accepted to climb a ladder of advancement and achievement in their society, at the personal level.


How, in the future, momentous shifts away from overwhelming Defense budgets, over–depleting of natural resources, over–fishing of ocean populations, and over–consumption are to be effected, is a question affecting every living being.


America has for some years now, and that means 'AMERICA' as the abstract ideal of a world that once admired our ideals much more than today, been on a road that is perfectly described by 'short term gains'.


Gains for politicians, to get elected without taking any stands.


Gains for capitalists, to increase profits today, by ignoring 'external costs', climate change and resource depletion.


Wherein the gains for a common, persevering man or woman? A family? Their 'Seventh Generation'?


Look elsewhere than to the United States, as once people's backs turned away from Rome.
Hear this, however: the end of the Roman Empire did produce something of rare note...


the Dark Ages


How justifiable to ponder that, as petroleum passes One Hundred dollars the barrel, in a simple supply and demand ratio that won't retrograde significantly.

And tomorrow, we begin to fathom, the choices that America will offer the world, the world post-Bush...


___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___
© 2008